


send help if you can (and you can't)

by Ashling



Series: raw meat [1]
Category: Original Work
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-29
Updated: 2018-10-29
Packaged: 2019-08-09 10:15:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 978
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16447952
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ashling/pseuds/Ashling
Summary: on ingesting as much homemade poison as possibleon learning no lessons at allon being fucked in every available metaphor(art about art about art about art about art. there, is that a poem?)





	send help if you can (and you can't)

Empty screen. A voice, falsely pleasant: _Let's see here...what seems to be the problem?_

 

 

 

  

 

Young woman, long dark hair. Eyes to camera, quiet. 

 _I should sing to the ocean,_ she says. The setting, the frame: it should be confessional. It isn't. She's just telling. 

 _Why?_ says a voice coming off-camera, upper left. Located, somehow. Slightly hostile.

_The ocean is the ideal audience because it's perfectly reliable in its indifference._

_What are you afraid of?_ the voice asks.

She looks up at the speaker. In those harsh lights, she's squinting, dark eyes gone nearly golden.  _Who says I'm afraid?_

_Why should its indifference matter? Why should the indifference of any audience make a difference?_

_Maybe it doesn't,_ she says.

 _But,_ the voice says, impatiently,  _you just praised it for its indifference. That was its defining virtue, wasn't it?_

 _Yes._ There's something unpleasant and precarious about the set of her mouth.

_So what are you more afraid of in a responsive audience: rejection, or affection?_

_Cut_ , she says.

_No, you're not getting away with that. I'm the director now._

She stares fixedly at the person behind the camera. This lasts for six minutes, and then the camera turns off. Shortly afterwards, it turns back on.

 

 

 

 

 

 _It seems like an obvious answer, doesn't it?_   the voice says. _Rejection. That's gotta hurt the most._

She shakes her head.  _You could kill yourself on celery,_ she says.

The voice cuts off a laugh, startled. Maybe it's the grave thin voice in contrast with the prosaic word, _celery_. It's little and green and crunchy beside the previous rolling blue sea.

 _I mean it,_  she says. _If you only had water and celery, and you were starving, you'd eat it gratefully, right?_

_I suppose._

_The thing is, it takes more energy to process than it gives back. You'd eat yourself hungry. Eating celery would just kill you quicker, but you couldn't stop yourself._

_Technically, you could stop yourself._

She laughs, bitterly. _Self-control is not my forte._

A moment of silence. Then, more quietly, she says: _Can you imagine, this green, growing thing, as good as poison._

 

 

 

 

 

 _What makes this audience affection so poisonous, then?_ the voice asks.

She shifts in her seat. _My nose is too wide for television._

The voice is quick as a bullet: _Bullshit._

_You're right. What I meant to say is: my nose is too wide for love._

_Bullshit._  This time, the voice is less assured. _What does that mean? Do you even know what you're saying?_

The young woman says, _What I mean? Just this: if I bleach myself half-dead, they'll love me. Bleach all the color out and paint my face a handsome man. They'll let me have anything, then._

She makes a sharp motion with her hand, as if to prevent all interruption. She goes on, _Pimples, warts, scars, blood on my hands, blood flowing out of my mouth. Teeth fangs and all. Or three pairs of wings. The harbinger of the apocalypse or the messenger of God. I could be as much of a monster as I wanted, or as much of a saint, and I'd still never get put away in a side corner, in a high cabinet. Do you understand? I'd get taken out for more than special occasions. I'd be more than a specialty item._

 _Words,_ she says, _make the cheapest plastic surgery in the world. And there's no visible scarring._

She says, _Imagine all that love, when you've got your face stretched out in the shape of someone else. Imagine the feeling when your face slowly settles back into itself, and all that love fades away. Imagine feeling all that warmth leaving your body. Like bleach is life, and who I am is a kind of death._

 

 

 

 

  

The voice seems slightly rattled, but it goes on:  _the sea, then. Reliably indifferent._

 _Yeah. The thing is,_ she says, _you could drink the whole fucking ocean and still die of dehydration. That's the way saltwater works. That, and you could drown. In every way, the sea's unsafe. It's lonely. It's kind of barren._

_Kind of barren? How?_

_I mean it's barren, period._

_What does that mean?_

_You know 'no man is an island?' Well, take my pen away and watch the bridge of this peninsula just disappear. Watch me disappear._

_Some creatures live in the ocean, you know._

_I would have to evolve at the speed of light to do that. I'd have to turn into a different species. Sharks have to swim to survive; I have to sing. In every metaphor, in every world, in every way, I am fucked._

 

 

 

 

 

No more voice now. No more hostility. It's only her, speaking into the wide and empty of the camera. Small.

_I prepared for this for twenty years, spent nearly a year with everything else shredded except for this, my only art, and all it taught me was this: I can find love and connection if I can just turn myself into somebody else. And I can. I can do that._

_It's too easy. i can't remember the last time I was myself_

_I'm fading_

_so what's it gonna be: turn into somebody else who can drop this art, or keep this art by turning into somebody else? different skin or different species? Tell me_

 

 

 

  

 

_hey. can you help me? no i'm asking. really. i'm scared_

 

 

 

  

 

_i'm scared._

 

 

  

 

 

(Twenty minutes of just breathing, and the camera is running out of battery. The screen goes dark. There is sound only now, captured on the backup recorder.

When the voice finally recovers, it recovers with a vengeance, determinedly pleasant. Brisk, even.

 _You know what?_  it says.  _I think I know what you're getting at. It's like that old, classic metaphor. If a tree falls in a—_

A choking sound, like someone's crying or someone's getting strangled. Someone gasping for air.

The young woman, shakily: _Fuck this._ )

 

 

  

 

 


End file.
